AUSTIN, Texas — Molly Ivins once described the Texas Legislature as the best form of free entertainment in a city that bills itself as the live music capital of the world.

From quips about shrinking government to the point where you can fit it in a uterus, to an amendment to a budget bill that would have require 10 percent courses offered by universities to focus on Western Civilization, the Texas Legislature has managed to live up to that billing once again this session.

Adding to the theater over the past couple of days: A visit from a delegation of conservative California Republican Assemblymen, conservative business groups… and Democratic Lt. Gov Gavin Newsom, the liberal former mayor of San Francisco.

Yesterday, the California delegation met with Texas Republican (and Tea Party backed) Governor Rick Perry and some of his top advisors to talk business climate. Today, the group used a committee room in the basement extension of the Capitol to hear testimony from Texas and California businessmen about how they would go about jumpstarting the California economy.

The message today — mainly from groups lobbying for additional tort reform in California — was the same as Thursday: Lowering taxes, handcuffing trial lawyers and a “business friendly” (or lax) regulatory climate were the keys to Texas success and could be the keys to boosting the California economy.

As far as news value, there wasn’t a whole lot there. Everyone said what people pretty much expected them to say. What made the event notable (if not hysterical) was the context surrounding the rather rote verbiage.

When Rick Perry was running for re-election for his second term as governor he hitched his wagon to Proposition 2, which banned gay marriage or anything like it in Texas. The issue surfaced again in 2010 when The Texas Tribune reported that Perry was linking the issue of gay marriage to job creation.

“There is still a land of opportunity, friends — it’s called Texas,” Perry said. “We’re creating more jobs than any other state in the nation. … Would you rather live in a state like this, or in a state where a man can marry a man?”

Perry styles himself as a cowboy. He’s given names to the boots he wears; one he dubbed “Freedom” and the other he calls “Liberty.” In the spirit of that sort of West Texas bravado, Perry likes to sit back in his chair, throw his arm around whatever is chair or person is closest to him, and squint at whoever is talking.

Thursday was no different. While listening to someone speak, Perry sat back in his chair and threw his arm around his neighbor — except this week, unlike every other time before, Perry found his arm behind the chair of Gavin Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor who attempted to legalize gay marriage.

There was another one of those moments at the hearing room in the Capitol’s basement today.

It’s not uncommon for members of the Legislature to wander into hearings for committees they’re not on and sit up at the dais. About halfway through the hearing, in strolled Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, who took a seat on the end of the dais next to Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund.

Chisum’s made a name for himself at the Legislature over the past two decades for leading the Christian conservatives in their fight, has a particularly lengthy record in battling against gay rights.

The seventy-third session (1993) of the Texas Legislature is pretty much typified by the following Warren Chisum story, Representative Chisum being the Bible-thumping dwarf from Pampa who has added such je ne sais quoi to the proceedings this year.

The Texas Senate had a rare moment of courage early in the session when it voted to remove homosexual sodomy from the revised version of the penal code. All were astonished.

Their vision made its way over to the House, where Chisum promptly rose and introduced an amendment to reinstate the damn thing. The Housies were afraid everyone would think they were queer if they didn’t vote for Chisum’s amendment, so they did.

Then some scholar explained to Chisum that unless he reinstated the ban on heterosexual sodomy as well, the law would be declared unconstitutional. So Chisum promptly got up and did just that.

Whereupon we had one of the more bizarre debates in the history of the Lege, with assorted avant garde members rising at the back mike to say, approximately, “Uh, Warren, uh, suppose I am in bed with my lawfully wedded spouse and I, like, kind of misaim and wind up in the wrong hole. You don’t want to send me to prison for that, do you?”

Chisum would stoutly reply, “Yes, I do. It’s against nature and The Bible.”

So the Housies were afraid everyone would think they were perverts if they didn’t vote for it, and they did.

Just a year after that hilarious battle on the House floor, the Houston Post (which was to the Houston Chronicle what the Examiner was to the SF Chronicle) reported that Chisum had invested more than $200,000 in life insurance policies that paid out when AIDS patients died. From the article (sorry, no link available to the Houston Chronicle’s internal library):

Investors nationwide are paying terminally ill patients 50 percent to 80 percent of the actual value of their life insurance policies. Patients reap the benefit of needed cash for the remainder of their lives. Investors as beneficiaries are paid full policy value after death.

“My gamble is it’ll make not less than 17 percent and sometimes does considerably better,” said Chisum, who owns six policies. “If they die in one month, you know, they do really good.”

Chisum, who’s on the Texas House Environmental Regulation Committee, answered a few questions while he was sitting on the dais today. Visiting California Assemblymembers wanted to know how long it took to get a permit to drill an oil well in Texas (answer: three days).

Sitting just a few chairs away at the same dais was Gavin Newsom, who didn’t say a word during the entire hearing after the conclusion of introductions.